Creative Services

Support

Other

Developer Biography

PROFESSIONAL: Born in Australia, Dr. Sorensen received his Doctor of Engineering degree from University of Kansas in 1979, doing his doctoral project on Pioneer Venus at NASA Ames. He then was a Space Shuttle guidance and control engineer, worked in Mission Control as assistant Flight Director, and finally was a software engineering manager supporting Shuttle missions. In 1990 he joined Bendix in Alexandria, Virginia, as Observations Manager of DOD’s LACE satellite. In 1994, Dr. Sorensen was the Lunar Mission Manager for the DoD/NASA Clementine lunar mission for which he received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. Dr. Sorensen was the program manager for the $23 million Space Systems R&D contract with NRL under which the USAF MSTI-3 satellite was operated. He was then technical director for Honeywell’s global satellite tracking and control system, DataLynx. Dr. Sorensen joined the KU Aerospace Engineering Department as associate professor 2000-2007. In 2007 he joined the University of Hawaii as a professor and project manager in the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and is on the AIAA Board of Directors as the Director of the Space and Missile Group.

GAMING: While in Houston in 1981 Sorensen released through DECUS a game for DEC computers he wrote called Starfleet. In 1982 he started up a company called Cygnus, which marketed a game for the PC and other home computers called Star Fleet I: The War Begins. In 1986 he and his partners incorporated to form Interstel Corporation (with Sorensen as CEO), which that same year became an affiliated label of Electronic Arts. In 1988 one of Interstel’s games, Empire: Wargame of the Century, was named as Computer Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine. Star Fleet II: Krellan Commander was released in 1989. A hostile takeover bid forced Sorensen to sell his shares and leave Interstel in 1990, and the company ceased operation in 1992.

With programmer Brett Keeton and artist/game designer Richard Launius, Sorensen formed a game-development company, Supernova Creations, in 1991. Their game, Star Legions, was released by Mindcraft, Inc. (an affiliated label of EA) in late 1992, but Mindcraft went out of business about a year later. A Windows version of Star Fleet, called Star Fleet Deluxe, reached beta status in 2002, but went no further after the death of Brett Keeton that same year.